By Andrea Butler

We have been very impressed by the wide range of stitched techniques that have been used to create the many wonderful houses that we have received for our participatory AccessArt Village Project.  They range from beautifully embroidered surfaces to charming line drawings in stitch. The AccessArt Village Project is now closed but if you would like to make a sewn drawing of your home or of a favourite building, this stitch activity could be for you.  The project can be completed at one sitting or you can finish it over several small sessions.  

One way to approach embroidery/stitching is to think about it in terms of collage and mark making: hanks of wool and shapes cut from fabric can act as an equivalent to paint or coloured paper; stitches are very like the lines and marks you can create with felt tips, markers or coloured pencils.

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AccessArt is a UK Charity and we believe everyone has the right to be creative. AccessArt provides inspiration to help us all reach our creative potential.

Back to InSET & CPD

Teachers Battle it Out in Conversation with Marks on Paper

Teachers embarked on an exercise whereby they made marks on paper to have a conversation with a partner. This was a playful and fun exercise and teachers very much enjoyed both the process and outcomes.

Teachers Explore Pattern, Shape & Texture with Charcoal, Graphite, Masking Tape and Pastels

This was the second session in the series and an introduction to pattern, shape and texture with charcoal and graphite, and an opportunity for teachers to break down any preconceived ideas about what drawing is and who drawing processes is for.

Play and Placement: Teachers Explore Approaches to Drawing

This was the third and final session in the series, and an opportunity to play with creative mark-making and explore context and placement as an introduction to larger scale drawing and concepts around installation art.

UK Charity AccessArt welcomes artists, educators, teachers and parents both in the UK and overseas.

We believe everyone has the right to be creative and by working together and sharing ideas we can enable everyone to reach their creative potential.

Join AccessArt from only £3.50 per month and enjoy full access to hundreds more resources!

Arts and Minds: Time to Introduce Ourselves – A Sculpture Challenge

We kicked off the programme with a quick making challenge which would act as an ice-breaker and introduce students to an array of materials.

Arts and Minds: Asemic Writing and Invented Text

Students were given the opportunity to further explore expressive mark making as a tool for self-expression and a vehicle for communication.

Arts and Minds: Expressive Monoprinting on a Big Scale

Students enjoyed monoprinting on a large scale by rolling printing ink and acrylic paint directly onto the table and experimenting with ways to take prints.

Constructing the World with Collage

Students were invited to use their previously created monoprints to construct large scale collages inspired by the landscape surrounding the college.

Manipulating Clay with Water

In this session teenagers had an abundance of clay and the freedom to play and manipulate form.

With Special Thanks To:

And to Pink Pig sketchbooks for their continued support of AccessArt and providing young people with beautiful books for this project.

Building to the Limit

In this session students were given the challenge of making building blocks out of mixed media and using them to build a sculpture. They were encouraged to experiment with balancing different elements together and setting themselves the challenge of seeing how far they could build before their constructions collapsed.

Drawing for Mindfulness

Students were guided on drawing exercises designed to explore drawing as a tool for seeing and being in the here and now.

Feeling Through Drawing

Students were led on a guided drawing experience of drawing through touch.

Arts and Minds: A ‘Heart-Work’ Conversation

Teenagers were introduced to graphite, charcoal, masking tape and acrylic paint as mediums for communal expressive mark making. A collective drawing was produced, whereby students were encouraged to work in collaboration and in response to each other.

UK Charity AccessArt welcomes artists, educators, teachers and parents both in the UK and overseas.

We believe everyone has the right to be creative and by working together and sharing ideas we can enable everyone to reach their creative potential.

Join AccessArt from only £3.50 per month and enjoy full access to hundreds more resources!

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Pathway: Telling Stories through drawing and making

This is featured in the ‘Drawing Stories Through Drawing and Making’ pathway

Explore these resources created by artist Hester Berry, to develop your develop technique, observation, and good practice in painting and drawing when approaching the landscape as a subject.

The series begins with suggestions for how to keep a sketchbook followed by exercises in drawing and painting.

We hope that these exciting resources will inspire you to experiment with materials and techniques and  enable you to discover your own visual language for drawing and painting the landscape.

Explore Hester Berry’s resources to help build upon drawing and painting from life.

Explore the basics….

Develop your understanding of landscape painting

Introduction to Landscape by Hester Berry

An exercise in looking and discovering

Landscape Painting: Tone in the Landscape

Explore tone in the landscape 

Landscape Painting: Plein Air Painting

Explore what ‘Plein Air’ means

Landscape Painting: Colour in the Landscape

Simplify colour by breaking it down

landscape Painting: Expressive mark Making

Practice and hone technical skills